Here are the two articles I mentioned previously:
- “AI Prompt Engineering Isn’t the Future” by Acar, Oguz A., in Harvard Business Review, dated June 6 2023 (site last visited June 15 2023), and
- “Are You Solving the Right Problems” by Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas, in Harvard Business Review, from the January-February 2017 issue (site last visited June 15 2023).
A quote from the second article, originally published in 2017:
In surveys of 106 C-suite executives who represented 91 private and public-sector companies in 17 countries, I found that a full 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% strongly agreed or agreed that this flaw carried significant costs.
“Are You Solving the Right Problems” by Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas, in Harvard Business Review, from the January-February 2017 issue (site last visited June 15 2023)
I’m slowly sidling up to expressing my own views on this topic, I know. My initial reactions are very vocal and filled with disbelief and profanity.
I’ll try to calm down a bit and be more methodical in my critiques. What are managers, whether low level, mid level, or C-suite, paid for in these companies? What are the discussions when they are promoted?
This would be like a national non-profit, closing down multiple chapters per year, with an acknowledged problem in getting members to sign up for leadership positions in chapters which are still active. And the national officers of that non-profit being most concerned with getting enough personal information from members that they can better qualify for government grants.
The bigger the problem is, the more chance there’s something about it people don’t want to acknowledge. The longer the problem exists, the more chance it spawns its own side-effect problems which will have to be dealt with, before the underlying problem can be addressed.
Bureaucrats of all types are very adept at finding what will get them promoted, what will keep their job safe, and what will threaten their job. Not what should get them promoted, keep them safe, or threaten their job. What will.
If an organization promotes people on how eagerly they follow orders, and not whether they understand the orders they give and are given, the intent, the immediate effects, and the long term effects of those orders, then the more likely this will be the result. Organizations which are much better at solving problems than identifying problems.
Life changes. These organizations will not be able to handle the change, and will die.